Ideas, Knowledge & Updates

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WordPress 5.0 and the new block-based Gutenberg editor is finally being released today! (…that’s the 6th of December 2018). But how did we get here? How did we get to the release of this all-new revolutionary change to WordPress? Let’s take a quick look.

Summer Ramp Up

Over the summer of 2018 WordPress 4.9.8 was released which contained the famous ‘Gutenberg Prompt’ – you’ve probably seen it but here’s a screenshot:

It was also around this time that it was announced that the Classic Editor plugin, which is essentially a way to block all of the fancy new editing options in WordPress 5.0, would be officially supported until the year 2021:

Classic Editor is the recommended way to seamlessly upgrade to WordPress 5.o at low-risk so this was received well by the community. It is estimated that the majority of users who have issues with the release of 5.0 will be asked to install this plugin to regain stability on their site.

November 27, 2018

Unfortunately November 27th came and went with no real significant announcement on the release.

At this point things were getting tense in the community with some searching for a release date before the end of 2018 and other wishing to push back on the release ‘indefinitely’ citing issues with the Gutenberg editor related to accessibility, backwards compatibility and stability

November 29, 2018

To combat some of the negative community comments Matt opened up what he called ‘Listening Office Hours‘ which would run “Thursday through Sunday” on an first-come-first served basis.

Pushback from the community on this new release date was clear and not everyone agrees that releasing such a significant update during the holiday-period OR just hours before a large WordPress-focused conference that the majority of core contributors will be attending is the best idea – but Matt and the release team stuck to this date and we should see WordPress 5.0 rolling out soon.

The Negatives

The Positives

Personally, I’d like to get WordPress 5.0 out ASAP (before 2019) so this is great for me and wonderful news for our agency. We’ve been using the Gutenberg editor (active via a plugin) on projects since the start of 2018 and our team have a solid understanding of how to develop for it and the positive change it will bring to the work we offer.

Sure, we have a lot of old clients who will unfortunately not be bestowed with this new editing experience, but that’s fine, this is why the Classic Editor plugin exists.

What Next?

If you need to get up-to-speed on modern WordPress development, directly related to WordPress 5.0, then try: